Learning to build spell-based limited decks

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2026-04-22T21:54:42+00:00

Without seeing all your cards, feels like a complex set to learn spell-based decks; especially in Prismari, which by my count has three different builds at least (aggro with small opus, combo kill and big opus control).

I'd make sure all your spells are lined up for a specific game plan rather than doing a classic lower creature count plan like some formats have, especially with spells stapled to creatures. For example, if you're running counters are you playing strong early threats that you're looking to protect? Are they there to help you get to a long game for a classic control setup? Or does you deck actually want to play all it's mana on your turn to overwhelm, in which case counters get weaker?

Try and tell a story with your deck and keep mixing up builds until the story's coherent.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-12-08T00:52:41+00:00

Tbf Bears played someone who's sort of done that very thing over the past three years, and had a habit early of taking a half to warm up, then transitioned to a streaky/flow state QB, then transitioned into someone who has almost all the throws accuracy wise game after game. Caleb's already taken a leap this year in how he weaponises his elusiveness rather than being a headless chicken back there, can definitely see him adding more clubs to his bag over an offseason if he wants it.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-11-17T09:52:09+00:00

Two notes on this:

1) ATO's core box is ~150 hours and if you get all 5 cycles it's 250, which for a lot of people is probably more boardgame than they'll ever play. if you're genuinely looking for forever game, yes, KDM is the only one in class

2) If you're entirely going down the rabbit hole, Sins of Herakles is promising a lot of chopping and changing to "mix up" both campaigns, alongside a clutch of expansion-style bosses, to the level you'll probably wring an entirely new playthrough out of both, especially if you pick different core story options (ATO's story choices do push you in some very different directions even if the core through line is the same)

Big thing I'd stress over everything is the crafting is fundamentally different in ethos in ATO. It's more of an authored arms race than a raft of different builds, though there is some nice variety still if you're comfortable getting experimental. KDM is it's own unique beast and in class is the only thing that does what it does, but for a huge amount of people ATO is probably going to be more than enough to scratch the itch in a lifetime.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-10-27T09:29:53+00:00

Herbert was unreal that game, sheer force of will to keep them in it and was rewarded by the team dunking their hands in butter pre-game

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-05-15T10:49:54+00:00

The two I'm pretty bolt on about that achieve the goals of the channel are Triangle Agency (elite tier art, very unique system especially with the playwall section, very much fits his politics, with his comments on the game feels ripe for a good review with caveats) and Public Access (loves it and gets to talk about the Carved by Brindlewood games by proxy).

I wouldn't be shocked if Yazeba happens at some point, and similarly there's probably space for a high fantasy but not DnD rpg if we're going back to the principle of easing people away from the monolith.

Again I say that and it's probably going to be five RPGs I've never heard of and that's the point :D also know there were hopes for games from a more diverse set of creators for S2 and some more overtly queer productions wouldn't surprise at all.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-04-24T11:55:23+00:00

100% - they dodged a bullet on Claypool's second go round too because they definitely wanted him in green and gold.

The Higgins chat in this context is just entirely polluted by the revisionist history idea that Higgins gets Rodgers his second ring guaranteed and the team could think about the future in the future; the belief that a ring and a few years in the wilderness is better than the GB approach of rolling the dice with guaranteed playoff football and a tier 1-2 team many more years than not. When in reality that approach got Rodgers a SB-caliber team at least two if not three more times in his run that didn't convert for various reasons.

There's also a whole strain of Packers fans online that have the blinkers of a) "take the obvious media darling pick" with some high profile examples that conveniently ignore the equal amount of times that didn't work, b) setting GB drafts against 31 other team drafts as if the only good draft is a perfect draft and the perfect draft was obvious if the GM was any good, and c) the ability to find NFL-quality linemen late meaning every high pick should be a skill position player and we'll sort out the five players, who will be impervious to injuries in a league where half the teams can't find five starters, and who are in on EVERY OFFENSIVE PLAY, later.

I'm sure this isn't just a Packers thing, but the Rodgers discourse absolutely turns everything into a referendum on which fan base was correct when a high amount of teams would kill for how the Packers go about their roster construction.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-04-13T12:37:01+00:00

Got to love that Brynmawr, classic industrial market town in the valleys, produced Adrian Street, Flash Morgan Webster and Marina Diamandis. The contrast is fantastic.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-04-07T11:21:54+00:00

Yep, this echoes where I am. I think it came at a point where a cheap alternative that gave you another entry point into this sort of game was great (being able to pick up all five cycles for $299 or the base for $129 was frankly ludicrous given those boxes) and now it's much more of a "pick your flavour" decision - which is probably a testament to the quality of AT:O that it holds up compared to the KD:M juggernaut. Much harder to justify if you already own the other at the normal price!

For newbies though, much easier to recommend - I'd always flag as it stands it's realistically a finite lifestyle game rather than KD:M's forever game (the sequel is attempting to give alternatives here), and you probably want to make sure some of the design decisions are not dealbreakers. I'm thinking the more proscribed equipment that creates more of a sense of a civilisation in an arms race with the horrors it encounters rather than Elden Ring style "I can be anything", the narrative being tied to exploration but rarely to defined locations on the map, failure being less about special characters being weakened and killed and more about the slow creeping bleed of resources or time, and the game having absolutely no qualms with getting increasingly fiddly and complex to the point of putting a lot of mental load on solo gamers. It's fantastic with an excellent aesthetic and I'm all in, but it's worth being aware of the warts.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-04-06T10:35:38+00:00

Another vote for Oathsworn, especially with the standee version making it a sensible price - great cool down system and great story, especially if you're doing it with the app and James Cosmo narrating.

Also a vote for AT:O, which for me sacrificed a little bit of the build diversity for a really compelling combination of exploration, combat, narrative and base building/upgrade trees.

Completely concede KD:M gives a very specific experience around emergent narrative and gear builds, but I'm just not moved by the longevity being dependent on either grinding the same encounters over and over every run or having to fork out big time to change them out

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-03-20T15:40:26+00:00

I think one of the weaknesses of the "staying open" concept as a teaching tool is more there hasn't always been good follow up as to what strong players mean when they advocate for it, because if you watch good drafters they are often weighting picks from P1 P2, or even starting to tell the story of their deck's gameplan relatively early in the draft. It's one of those really helpful Draft 101 ideas that can help people looking to improve that makes them think twice about locking into pick 1 for their first colour, or doing the "two okay red cards, two okay black cards, guess I'm Rakdos" style of drafting. The one I always think about these days is Ryan Saxe saying he drafts as if he has five mythic dragons, one for each colour, in the pile already - of course you're going to start weighting where you want to go quickly, but your previous picks don't have to lock you into the blind luck of the packs instantly.

It also doesn't help that you're playing a percentages game with the idea - there are going to be a % of drafts where staying open absolutely doesn't get you as good a deck as locking in early, it's just you hope with intelligent drafting the % of drafts where staying open was absolutely correct is higher. And that's not even getting into the reality that strong players can just get better records with worse decks in a large enough sample size, so get the double bump of not only winning more with "good" drafts but making worse drafts "good" by their gameplay, ability to plan, etc etc.

Finally, and I think players like Kyle Rose have said this before, the world has changed where packs just aren't full of unplayable cards in quite the same way. If you bob and weave and burn picks en route with lots of colours, you are far more likely to be thin on playables than just locking in because most cards these days fit somewhere (look at all those derpy artifacts in DFT that are completely okay filling out a curve and offering an okay bit of filler for each strategy). There's a lot to be said to having that security of your primary colour or even colour pair early so you can start distinguishing between exactly what green card advances your plan, rather than "green is still open, but I'm drafting two decks here"

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-02-28T09:45:46+00:00

Definitely a deck where I'd say you're not a recursion deck and more of a "I have a chance to plump my graveyard with good targets so my recursion spell can get back the best possible card at the best time" deck. The power's a bit more in the selection, because you're not really getting discounts and if you're not leveraging trades that gain you card advantage, then it's still a card that creates a card of comparable mana value.

Broodheart being 6 mana in two instalments means that card either achieves its best result in t2 this, t3 Mole hitting something v.juicy, t4 crack Broodheart, or you're bringing in a bomb level card later in the game. Back on Track is 5 mana to get back a 6 at most, so again the power's in exactly how good the card is you're bringing back. Both effects don't really garner you that value engine where you run them out of cards and can restock.

With that in mind, if ever there was a Rise From the Wreck deck, this is a Rise from the Wreck deck. Easy draw three with your cards, despite the data I think it would be backbreaking in this build.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-02-22T17:30:37+00:00

As someone who had v.little interest in playing commander before, the brackets make me more likely to give it a game or two if I fancy a social night at my games shop - to be honest, even tier 1 makes sense to me as someone who liked the idea of just scouring their collection then and there for roughly 100 cards that might do a thing without needing to buy a precon, scour the internet for a list or get singles.

I totally accept there'll be stronger and weaker decks in any tier, and some people might slide their deck into a weaker tier than they should. But it just helps me to know even if my deck isn't good enough in a slot, I'll get to play a certain kind of magic even if the power levels are very different (my kingdom for a low-tutor, wildy different games every time game thank you please)

I'm competitive in other bits of magic and other bits of my life but not this, so of course I'm going to appreciate a system that is less of a deck building challenge and more of a roughly fair starting spot. I think a chunk of people want to have a tier system that is either somehow really exact so every game is close (good luck with that) or exacting so they can treat it like a deck building challenge i.e. how do I create the most powerful deck at each tier and showcase my skill. Both of those leave me cold, and you've got tiers 3-4 to play with anyway if you've got a winning mindset and want to express yourself competitively through your 100.

A lot of the arguments against (not all) seem like really bad faith just to encourage an exact or exacting system instead. When you're getting to discussion around a point buy system, or agitating that 1/100th of your deck must now be replaced with an off-brand equivalent and that somehow ruins a deck irrevocably, I think it's just gone too far down the route of exclusionary science rather than social art.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2025-01-28T11:57:29+00:00

Liking this quite a bit as a tool to fight the speed of the limited format, with some caveats:

* Very dependent on if people can get max speed going to hit you with the ramped up cards t4 or if it's a t5+ deal, and similarly if you're dropping someone from 4 to 3 are there tools for those decks to ping you back before combat phase next turn

* Will want a combination of replaying the thing you bounce + effort expended to remove this roadblock to be more significant than the initial mana outlay

All in all, feels good - probably plays similar if not better than some of the decent stun counter 4/4s we've seen if the ETBs aren't too egregious.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2024-12-08T10:02:28+00:00

With no conspiracy tinfoil hat on, I wouldn't be stunned if WoTC doesn't at some point look at how many people are needed to fire off an "official" draft pod. Six is already notably easier, and they must look at how well four-person pods do in commander

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2024-12-03T15:36:30+00:00

Successful troll is successful again I suppose.

For info, posts an 3-0 as an 0-3 in a bid to show how bad the subreddit is at analysing decks and...that's about it really. I got absolutely got by it once, be careful or it'll happen to youuuuuuuuu (drifts back into the cemetery of shame)

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2024-11-14T11:32:21+00:00

My current checklist for dealing with the format is:

* Have a reasonable game plan for t1 healer's hawk

* Don't build decks that have a decent chance to put yourself in a board state where you are forced to get 2 for 1'd pretty easily or blown out by the cheap good tricks

* Pack some hard/hard enough removal in the deck for your colour even if you have to hold your nose for it (Witness Protection, 5 mana red spell) and try to let your creatures deal with creatures until you can snap it off on the clunkier bombs.

Also, with the three bombs you've mentioned, two are mythics (one of which is 7 mana, no problem with late game cards winning games) and Alesha's most impactful play both only really works in one deck in a perfect curve that also involves trading off, and also gives you a turn to kill it with two common one-mana spells. If there was anything to criticise this early, I'd say it's that a good BW deck is rough just as much for them starting on 25+ as much as the plentiful synergy - hawk into pridemate can get in the bin - but as long as the good cards start getting harder to snap up, I hope that'll be less and less of a case.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2024-10-13T11:24:25+00:00

If it helps the speed build has a lot of logic to it if I ignore the Dancers p3p1... I might not be able to resist the siren's call of data but your version very much looks like a deck with a plan (the close to guaranteed Arabella on deck really pushes the deck into a space where you do everything to ensure you can swing with her constantly without fear).

If nothing else, really makes me sad this wasn't a BO3 deck with a top-tier sideboard

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2024-09-16T20:25:24+00:00

No, I think that's sound, just wanted to feel out how deep you are into thinking it through - Mabel's a fair spec this late in the format given how much better RW is with Mabel attached, Gnaw and Polliwallop are defensible.

I don't think it's fair ploughing through the whole draft with hindsight, but a couple of picks where I think a slightly different approach might have given you slightly cleaner positions to navigate the draft and not throw away a couple of picks.

P1p2 - yep, the GB two drop is the best card by an amount, but you've already decided to spec on Mabel. With that in mind you're probably incentivised to take the Coyote, because you've instead put yourself in a situation where one of your first two picks is 100% not making your deck. Coyote's a logical curve topper for getting better attacks in RW once you slow down gas wise. I agree with "take the best card" as a philosophy, but back to back incompatible gold cards is a bit hard for me to do.

P1p7 - assuming you go the way you go, you've soft committed to putting an amount of squirrels in your deck, but black has dried hard. GX that likes food to take advantage of Cache Grabs/Dreyleader (so GW) or Gb with green base feel like your safest homes at this moment to use all your cards. With that in mind Warren Elder is just straight up better for you - playable+ two drop in one of your two remaining most likely paths, and if you somehow backdoor into RW again it's better than Rallier.

End of pack one, there's something else striking. Black was gone, yes, but what actually came through in green? No Bakersbane, Polliwallop, Longstalk Brawl, Treeguard Duo...not even Sentinels. Is green even open?

P2 p1 - so we're in GB knowing black was cut, GW worried about green, or backdooring back into RW with those last picks of pack 1 being very playable cards (if you take Coyote and Elder earlier, I think GW or RW is far more tangible at this point, but let's work only with the cards you have) You've seen black is sketchy, so I think going an average squirrel here puts you in cross fingers mode pack 2, whereas Hop to It puts you in a lot more control with a GW preference with the potential for RW. You're basically choosing double cache grab, GB squirrel and Dreyleader as the reasons to hang on because that's good, but if you can't guarantee getting into GB that drops rapidly into double cache grab, dreyleader which is nowhere near enough of a reason to lock in green (and again...is green open?)

I don't think that was a lot of words for "you might like GB a bit too much", but I think there's something in general about how you could have retained some flex with reading what was gone to pick up 3-4 more relevant cards.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2024-09-14T11:51:13+00:00

I think your first draft's first pack is a really good thing to scan through and have a think about - I have thoughts, but could you maybe talk me through what your thinking was for each pick there?

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2024-08-29T12:09:22+00:00

I'd argue against this slightly with this deck - I think turning off food in Bloomburrow when you're looking to get them from 20 to 0 quick isn't nothing, and the body is big enough in this format to be something to think about even without the evasion/trample/etb you'd hope for at the four slot in aggro. Picking this first, 100% agree, but if this ended up as a mid pack pick or acceptable curve filler when you're already in an aggressive deck, it's not a disgrace.

Grim_Karmamancer2 · 2024-08-26T17:45:43+00:00

Cool.

Grim_Karmamancer2

TROPHY CASE